"Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt."— Clarence Darrow

dream log: may 09 – that darn cat

Another pretty mundane and fairly easily interpreted dream: Alex is definitely on my mind, as he (or some other cat most likely representing him) seems to be appearing nightly, often around the issue of escaping (and one of his habits is to run out into the hallway whenever I open the door). The appearance of the MINI Cooper also is not surprising, given that I’ve done nothing to remedy my current car problems (ref. velleity), yet continue to experience a fair amount of anxiety over it. And Roger and Lee are the two non-work friends with whom I interact most frequently.

I was living in the townhouse in Old Town, Alexandria, that in the waking world my ex–Hal–and I had rented when we first moved to the DC area back in 1987. But my roommates in the dream were Roger and Daniel, who until recently were my avatar’s roommates in The Sims Online. Daniel was offstage in the dream: at one point I knew that he was in the shower and getting ready to leave for work, but I never actually saw him.

Lee was over visiting, and he and I were in the backyard. We went out the back gate and were looking at the trash and junk that all the neighbors on the block had put into the alley. We decided to go back in the house, but we walked the wrong way down the alley, getting about halfway down the alley before realizing. As we turned to come back, we saw a brand-new MINI Cooper (one of the two cars I’m leaning towards, at the moment, to replace my Saab in real life) parked at one of the neighbor’s houses, so we went over to look at it. Lee told me he also was thinking about getting a MINI, but that he didn’t think he could afford it.

We then turned back toward the house, and had to force open the back gate, which now was overgrown with vines. The back door of the townhouse was open, and Roger was preparing to leave for work, and he told me that Daniel was showering in preparation for work himself. Roger told me that he’d let Alex out into the backyard, which then panicked me, because we hadn’t seen him when we’d come in, and I started to worry that he might have gone out through the gate into the alley after we came in.

And then the alarm rang, and I woke up. Alex, realizing I was awake, jumped up and started headbutting me before finally settling down next to me… though when the snooze alarm went off nine minutes later, as it always does, he jumped up as though he were surprised, as he always does, and down to the floor.